The degree to which the acceleration has not meet the KPP is marginal. As to it not being about development that is a pretty strange statement to make.

Weight and drag are out? How on earth can you say that? Weight and drag are the cause of the problem! More weight and more drag than assumed therefore acceleration is lower than KPP.

So all LM need to do to improve acceleration is to redesign the F-35 to reduce weight, reduce drag or reduce both. Simple, no?

I foresee a problem modifying all the frames produced before the redesign, though, so best thing to do would be to halt production until the problem is fixed.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/news/p…st-report.html

As of Nov. 3, F-35C carrier variant (CV) jets had executed 59 successful catapult launches and three arrestments.

Would that be 59 attempted arrestments resulting in 3 successes? There may be no connection between catapult launches and arrestments.

What I wonder is whether the very short distance between wheels and hook will pose special problems. I have seen a graphic comparing wheel – hook distances for several carrier capable aircraft. IIRC the F-35C was less than 8 feet while the next nearest was 9+ feet.

We seem to have had ‘strong rumours’ both ways of late as far as I recall, I’m not going down the bookies just yet. Supposedly going to hear Thursday (where have we heard that before!?)

I guess it’s after business hours in India now. Has anyone spotted any Dassault/Eurofighter personnel coming out of the MOD with big smiles or tears in their eyes?

Out of the rumours, the one about EF being cheaper is more believable, based on price details of other contracts, and the earlier submission of financial bids in November.

However, taking offsets etc into account will take far longer (especially if stories that Dassault state they will enter negotiations into this after the deal is made).

No doubt there is probably still some arm twisting going on as the price is still far higher than India wanted to pay (before this saga started dragging out many moons ago).

Other posts say it is rumoured that the two contenders will be contacted on Thursday. Assuming that by now the cost of the two bids has been evaluated, what could be the reason other than to announce the contender selected for final negotiations?

I wonder if another possibility is that both contenders will be warned that the cost of their bids looks unacceptably high, so they will need to make a last minute improvement on their final bids to reduce the risk of finance for the project being refused.

Just a thought…

Korea may issue RFP for 62 FX III aircraft during week starting 16 Jan 2012.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/seoul-readies-f-x-iii-rfp-366654/

It seems amazing that such a mistake (if true) was made in the first place and perhaps even more amazing that the problem did not come to light the moment the first F-35C assembled had the tailhook added and tested for operation. I cannot understand how it would be possible to fail to see the problem at that point.

Probably because those who made it didn’t know, and those who knew and saw it considered it wasn’t in their best interest to point it out.

another thing may be that some who saw it, pointed that out but were rapidly ignored and bashed as “unsupportive” or that kind of stuff.

The functioning of the tailhook must have been verified before it was used in anger. Surely there are protocols regarding documentation of tests? I imagine that failing to log the test results correctly would be a serious breach of protocol. Could it be that the tailhook worked as designed but the design was simply wrong so that it did not work in real life?

But the F-35C has to compete with the F-18, the Rafale and soon the X-47B. The UK to me also seems more likely to go for a navalized Typhoon, as BAe has little or no stake in the F-18 (or the Rafale), while a Sea Typhoon seems easy enough to convert (which will generate more British jobs), will boost Typhoon production lines and also puts the Typhoon on the table for Indian carriers.

Typhoon’s characteristics make it a poor candidate for conversion to carrier operation. That means it can be expected that navalisation would be a very expensive business with a high degree of risk. Spending £ billions to make it flyable onto carriers would not make economic sense when less than 100 would be needed and cuts to other defence spending would probably need to be made.

India would not appear to be in the market even if Typhoon were selected for MMRCA, given that 2 types have already been selected for their carriers.

There has been a lot of defence speak floating around in the last few days, but I am told that the hook is too close to the main wheels so when the wheels are touching the deck, the hook can’t snag the wire. It therefore needs to be moved aft…..

Any reason why it cannot be lengthened rather than repositioned?